OSNews

I mean that I run into comparisons *made by others*.

so you can compare it then. I'm confused why even mention it.

Although I am shocked it cannot do something as simple as record Video.

"I mean that I run into comparisons *made by others*."

So you can compare it then. I'm confused why you even mention it.

Although I am shocked it cannot do something as simple as record Video, to play on another machine.

Seriously though I'm not even sure what use this may have. Your article just says its a very expensive fire server from a hardware; software perspective offering no *server* software to do anything...why not buy a NAS device for cheaper. It must do something.

Paul Thurrott has a much more in depth preview of WHS on his site.

http://www.winsupersite.com/reviews/whs_preview.asp

It's more then just a NAS. It's more of a portal to a home network. It doesn't record videos because a media center pc is supposed to do that then back it up to the WHS where it will get served.

You didn't read the article, did you, Segendendum? It says *right there* that you can stream audio, video, and graphical content.

I don't think you understand what streaming is, or what people mean by it. It isn't downloading files over a file sharing network, nor is it accessing something over a remote file share and CIFS, nor is it accessing something through a web interface either. That's so several years ago and so not interesting it isn't even funny. You don't need a Windows Server, or even a Linux one, to be able to do that. How long do you think I, and even people running peer-to-peer networks, have been doing that?

Hell, it's not even using things like Active Directory properly to make life easier for you, and giving you single sign-on on to your PC or any other device you own. Making sure that your PC and server passwords are the same so you have to do all the synchronising? Give me a break. I'll give you one guess why.

People want to stream audio and video in a meaningful way, and it's still quite a way from the functionality of something MythTV. Arguably, Microsoft's DRM commitments will stop them from really doing what people want. People want to rip their CDs and DVDs automatically to their server, bring up a meaningful menu on a client and watch any film they want without having to go and find the disc. They want it recording TV shows twenty to the dozen on that oh so brilliant storage so people can watch them whenever they want, and continue to watch them whenever they want (what was all that about linear storage again?)

Unless it does that then it's nothing more than a doorstop to just about everyone except people who think that spending money on a server that can't do proper RAID (pretty essential on a server that will never see a sys admin in the home), can't do automatic TV recording behind the scenes, doesn't have a means for ripping DVDs and their information for easy access is hip, cool and the latest thing.

Streaming simply means delivering media content as a stream of continuous packets to clients, so they can play it as if the entire content was right on their hard drive. This is *exactly* what Home Server does.

So yes, it streams. As was said in the article.

Oh my lord... you clearly haven't tried any of this stuff, but you're so certain that it doesn't work at all. You are so stridently ignorant!

WHS is meant to be used with Media Center and the XBox360 as well as through the Windows Media Player library. I have only used a bit of Media Center, but I know that Microsoft has all of these streaming video technologies and it is clear that WHS has features to work with them.

What makes you think that ripping DVDs to WMvs on the server is that hard? If you don't want to wait for Microsoft to negotiate with the content producers to do it, just use the same tools you were going to use for ripping the DVD on Linux or Windows.

In addition to PlatformAgnostic's comments, WHS also includes Windows Media Services. So, yes, you can stream media over the internet just like any other Windows server.

The technology is Windows Streaming Services, and it is included with Windows Server 2003. It just needs to be installed. The only lock in is that is used Windows Media encoding, so the end user needs a player that is capable of playing windows media streams.

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/forpros/server/server...

As for Active Directory, he says that the full functionality of Windows 2003 server is there, so if a user so chooses a domain can be setup. An AD domain is not needed. I've had the ability to setup an AD domain on my own LAN for years, but I don't do it. There isn't any advantage over just running a standard work group. Plus the overhead on AD is pretty heavy, as AD really requires three servers to run effectively.

What you really want is a media center pc rather then a Home server. WHS is designed as a compliment to the MC pc.

As for RAID, buy a full SAS hardware controller and do it right. A full version of Win2003 is under the hood.